Female Genital Anxieties: Views from the Nursery and the Couch

Olesker, Wendy

doi:10.1080/21674086.1998.11927560

Cited by 12 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…The technical language of our field is full of problems because our data are gathered by people about people in an interactive process; opinion becomes theory, yet simultaneously our language aspires to objectivity and generalizability. It has been argued, often and persuasively, that calling body anxiety in women "phallic castration" is misleading and that the phenomenon would be rendered more accurately by the term genital anxiety or female genital anxiety (Goldberger 1999;Olesker 1998;Dorsey 1996;Shaw 1995;Bernstein 1990;Chehrazi 1986). For example, "rational" may inadvertently be equated with the value judgments strong/clear/male; "irrational" with soft/murky/female.Patients frequently embrace these mistaken affinities, but there is no need for analysts to echo the emotional accretion as "theory" (see Balsam 1994).…”

Section: Recasting the Lexicon Of Female Developmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We now have an opportunity to challenge these fixed attitudes. It has been argued, often and persuasively, that calling body anxiety in women "phallic castration" is misleading and that the phenomenon would be rendered more accurately by the term genital anxiety or female genital anxiety (Goldberger 1999;Olesker 1998;Dorsey 1996;Shaw 1995;Bernstein 1990;Chehrazi 1986). Since Freud, we have learned about many different kinds of genital anxieties-e.g., those concerning loss of virginity, penile penetration, or the uterine and perineal strains of childbirth-that center on fantasies, referring to the present or future, about the personal female body.…”

Section: Recasting the Lexicon Of Female Developmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Integrating Male and Female Elements in a Woman's gEnder Identity

Balsam¹

2001

J Am Psychoanal Assoc

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Despite advances in female developmental theory since the 1970s, there remains a lingering tendency to stereotype and polarize gender identity. The key to this puzzle may be found in the legacy of early libido theory, which offers an unintegratable solution for women. This is because in order for a woman to claim femininity according to this early theory, her masculine trends in development must be repudiated and "overcome." A contemporary theory based on primary femininity suggests that this early theoretical "either/or" dilemma puts forward a developmentally immature solution. The analysis of a thirty-year-old woman, and a commentary contrasting "old" and "newer" ways of thinking on the part of the analyst, demonstrate that an interweaving pattern of paternal identifications and male body representations, together with the female body image and female identifications, is necessary to create a mature gender identity portrait. The female body representation and maternal identifications may indeed be enhanced by male internalizations, as happened in this particular instance.

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Section: Recasting the Lexicon Of Female Developmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Recasting the Lexicon Of Female Developmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Integrating Male and Female Elements in a Woman's gEnder Identity

Balsam¹

2001

J Am Psychoanal Assoc

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“…Meninas não têm pênis e invejam coisas de meninos, e estes, por sua vez, não têm atributos de meninas e invejam, consequentemente, coisas de meninas. Encontramos dois artigos que se baseiam em duas pesquisas de observação sobre esta questão, ambas realizadas nos Estados Unidos (Olesker, 1998;Senet, 2004).…”

Section: O Angustiante Universo Do Múltiplo Do Difuso E Do Imprecisounclassified

Feminino e psicanálise: um estudo sobre a literatura psicanalítica

Moraes¹,

Coelho²

2010

Psicol. estud.

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RESUMO. Apresentaremos os resultados de uma pesquisa sobre mulher e feminino na literatura psicanalítica realizada a partir da análise de artigos publicados em dois períodos: no auge do feminismo e na atualidade. Ao longo da pesquisa, verificamos que os artigos escritos no auge do feminismo permaneciam apegados à lógica fálica (do ter ou não ter) no tocante ao desenvolvimento psíquico da mulher, e que os artigos da atualidade apresentaram uma maior multiplicidade de aspectos, o que inclui questões envolvendo o complexo de castração, com sua implícita lógica fálica. O discurso do auge do feminismo, ao buscar estabelecer um lugar para a mulher diferente do lugar de negativo do homem, mostra a relevância atribuída, então, à lógica binária fálica, enquanto o discurso dos textos mais atuais busca o estabelecimento de um campo próprio e de uma positividade para a mulher na psicanálise.

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“…In keeping with his age, I often worked within Carlton's displacement in play, and actively reconstructed his infantile confusion about separation, loss of control, body damage, girl-boy differences, and the danger of his anger (Inderbitzen and Levy 1998;Sugarman 2008). I based my interpretations on what I learned from his play, the behavior he brought into the sessions, our previous work, our transference and countertransference interactions, and my knowledge of common fantasies among two-to-threeyear-old children (Galenson and Roiphe 1980;Olesker 1998;Tyson 1989;Tyson and Tyson 1990a). My interpretations included "reconstructions" that were necessarily, in part, "constructions" (Kris 1956) because of the degree to which a child two to three years old experiences and expresses overwhelming feelings in action rather than words (Balbernie 2001;Schore 2001).…”

Section: Further Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

The Complex Nature of Exposure To Early Childhood Trauma in the Psychoanalysis of a Child

Chertoff

2009

J Am Psychoanal Assoc

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When an intense transference relationship evolves during psychoanalysis, sensory and emotional experiences associated with trauma can arise spontaneously. Detailed clinical process material is presented from the psychoanalysis of a six-year-old boy whose severe trauma at age two and a half contributed to his conflicts about aggression and gender identity, impeding his development. A series of analytic sessions during which he spontaneously enacted fantasies, feelings, and defenses associated with the trauma in the immediacy of the transference relationship are used to illustrate how psychoanalysis provided him the safety to rework this overwhelming experience and its aftermath, thereby restoring progressive development. It is hypothesized that while work with trauma was only one feature in an otherwise complex treatment, psychoanalysis provided a sophisticated form of reexposure to developmentally primitive emotions, images, and fantasies that this child had not consciously connected with the trauma. Associated early childhood conflicts pertaining to aggression, separation, and gender identity, warded off with rigid defenses, had become intertwined with the trauma and its aftermath, rendering them otherwise inaccessible.

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Female Genital Anxieties: Views from the Nursery and the Couch

Cited by 12 publications

References 8 publications

Integrating Male and Female Elements in a Woman's gEnder Identity

Integrating Male and Female Elements in a Woman's gEnder Identity

Feminino e psicanálise: um estudo sobre a literatura psicanalítica

The Complex Nature of Exposure To Early Childhood Trauma in the Psychoanalysis of a Child

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